4/20/2016

Again, the Rude Pundit has to state, for the record, that he threw his lot in with Bernie Sanders. But, for chrissake, get yer facts together, Bernie voters, or you just sound like you're crazy.

For instance, we love touting the many victories Sanders has and then we turn around and get all angry about how New York held a closed primary - that is, only registered Democrats could vote in it. So, sorry, independents, but go fuck yourselves. This has upset the Sanders side because they think that their candidate would have won an open primary in New York (and that's kind of a big leap).

But that whole discussion is undermined by your very support for Sanders and his victories elsewhere. Because, see, many of the states Sanders has won have held caucuses, not primaries. And those fuckers are almost always meant only for the party faithful. It's their fuckin' rules.

Colorado. where Sanders beat Hillary Clinton by 19 points? Closed caucus for voting. Anyone could watch, if that's your thing. But only registered Democrats could vote.

Minnesota's rules are fun: You gotta say that you've voted for a Democrat before and intend to vote for a Democrat coming up, but you don't have to be a registered Democrat. You can be thrown out if someone calls you a liar.

In other caucuses Sanders won, Utah was open and Idaho was open but you couldn't also vote in the Republican primary.

While Sanders won the open primaries in Vermont, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Wisconsin, you could make a strong argument that much of the momentum of his campaign comes from closed caucuses for Democrats only and not from the mythical independent voters. You could also make the case that Clinton has captured those independents because of all the open primaries she's won (Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and more). Sorry, but results are results.

So while Sanders himself has every right to be angry about the bullshit failures that led to voter registrations being changed or purged across New York City, as we all should be, and, sure, he can be pissed that you had to register as a Democrat back in October in order to vote in the primary yesterday, it's pretty goddamned hypocritical for Bernie or any of his supporters to be upset about whether or not a delegate-awarding contest is closed.

You could argue that Sanders has a point when he says that, if the state is paying for the election, everyone should be able to vote, but, c'mon, by that logic, everyone in a state should be allowed to vote out of their districts when the state is paying for the elections. And when Sanders says it's wrong that "3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary," it's pretty fucking disingenuous and does harm to a nominating process that he agreed to be part of by running as a Democrat, despite not having been a Democrat.

And, you know, the Rude Pundit doesn't have a problem with a political party, which is an organization that provides support for candidates, saying, "Fuck you. You don't belong, so you don't vote." He does a have a problem with a system that allows for only two political parties to have a virtual lock on every goddamned election.

Hopefully, though, Sanders and we, his voters, can use what we've learned about this broken nominating clusterfuck and try to come up with a less stupid, more inclusive way to get to the general election.